In 'Once Upon a River' by Bonnie Jo Campbell, a teenage girl comes of age by learning how to navigate the world by way of a river, but unlike the story of Huckleberry Finn, the girl's experience has more perils.

"Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West" by Dorothy Wickenden, Scribner: 320 pp., $26 Dorothy Wickenden's grandmother, Dorothy Woodruff, was 29 when she set out for a remote Colorado outpost in 1916 to teach the children of homesteaders with her best friend,...